[Omah]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20001588

Jimmy Savile's charities are to close after their trustees decided that keeping them open could be "damaging" to the causes they support.

The trustees of the Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust and Jimmy Savile Stoke Mandeville Hospital Trust said they had considered a change of name in the wake of the sex abuse allegations against their late founder.

However, after meeting on Monday, it was decided that they "could not see a future for either charity" because the organisations would "always be linked in the public's mind with the late Jimmy Savile".

They spoke of their concern that adverse press coverage could be "damaging" for causes the two trusts support - and said protecting these causes was their primary concern.

Before setting up the general charitable trust in 1984, Savile established the Jimmy Savile Stoke Mandeville Hospital Trust in 1981 following a request from the Buckinghamshire hospital where he volunteered for many years to help raise funds for rebuilding work.

The Jimmy Savile Charitable Trust is primarily based in the Leeds area, although not all of its trustees - listed as Luke Lucas, Dr Roger Bodley and Lady Gabrielle Greenbury on the Charity Commission's website - still live there.

Its overview on the Charity Commission website states that the trust's objectives are to "provide funds for the relief of poverty and sickness and other charitable purposes beneficial to the community", as well as "provision of recreational and other facilities for disabled persons".

More than half the funds given out by the trust over the years had come from donors other than Savile, Ms Summers said.

"The trustees are eternally grateful to all those people for their support in the past, so we don't want it to be seen as just Jimmy's money," she said.

Following Savile's death last October aged 84, an auction of his collection of mementos and personal belongings - including his Rolls-Royce which went for £130,000 and the original red Jim'll Fix It chair for £8,500 - raised about £320,000 for his charities.

There will be further funds when the final part of Savile's estate "falls into" the trust, said Ms Summers, including some of his properties still to be sold. It is likely now that these funds will be distributed to other charities, along with the funds remaining in the two trusts.

However, the trustees have said they will not be publicly announcing which causes they money will go to.

Good - the name goes, the money gets re-distributed.